Gardening in Zone 8B in 20 feet of raised square foot beds and whatever I can squeeze into the front yard

Monday, January 19, 2015

Free Mulch

For 20 years, our municipality has collected Christmas trees and then mulched them, giving out the mulch for free to residents.

This is the first year that we made a point to participate in this windfall. My son and I went down to the fairgrounds. The nice people loaded it, and smoothed it. We didn't even have to get out of the truck. We were only responsible for the unloading.

It started with more than this, but I forgot to photograph it until we reached this point in the process.

Filling the wheelbarrow, to put the mulch in our back yard gardens.

My son and I posing as we put the mulch in the back yard.

We ended up with enough to go around every tree that lines my property line. Next year, we might come home and drop the load and go back for a second load. The people said that it was fine to do this. We didn't know how much we would need or how long it would take us. We also didn't know how much energy we had to devote to the project. We know for next year!

It was a wonderful blessing to us, saving us somewhere in the area of $400, had we used purchased pine bark mulch for the same area. And it is so good for the environment, re-using what would otherwise go to the landfill, and avoiding all those plastic bags that would have been on the pine bark mulch. Win! Win!

Our dump produces mulch from spring till fall from the backyard tree & bush trimmings that are picked up each week. Like Nancy, however, we have to load our own - it's quite the workout but well worth it.